This move makes perfect sense to me. Like the article stated, it was heavily foreshadowed and now it makes perfect logical sense. It's win-win for NBC if only because they get to keep Leno from going to ABC and trouncing Conan there. Look, Conan's target audience is not Leno's target audience. Meaning the people this is aimed at, the 60 year olds, maybe they'll stick around and watch Conan. But if they don't, Conan's got his own fanbase now and he'll do fine at 11:30. I agree that Fallon gets the short end of the stick here, but...I also agree that nobody gives a flying hoot about Jimmy Fallon.
It's clear that NBC can't compete in the scripted drama arena; there has been a plethora of failures in the last 3 television seasons. This allows them to stop the hurting for a bit with an entity that's known to work (Leno, like it or not, is far from the risk that the Rosie disaster was).